In the gold rush, many general IT vendors are becoming cloud computing vendors – or at least touting their products as such. In the same way that the lowly pretzel, once merely a salty snack, is now “low cholesterol,” these days every new app is Specially Designed for the Cloud.
At times, it seems all tech vendors are cloud computing vendors.
In the hubbub, the term cloud computing is an ever expanding buzzword. There are private clouds and public clouds and hybrid clouds. Some people use “cloud” as a synonym for virtualization – while others clearly disagree with this use. So who’s right?
In lieu of an ultimate authority, let’s use research firm Gartner’s definition. It’s a good one:

“…a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to external customers using Internet technologies.”

Translated into human-speak: We’ll access our software over the Web, instead of on our hard drive.
Your software might sit on a server in New York or New Delhi or New Haven, Connecticut. Or – hang on to your jetpack – maybe that app combines services from apps that reside in New York and New Delhi, with an add-on from a New Haven provider. Beam me up, Scotty.